


The Good

by giantessmess



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantessmess/pseuds/giantessmess
Summary: Is Miranda a good person?
Relationships: Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Comments: 6
Kudos: 167





	The Good

**Nigel**

He knows Miranda better than most. As well as anyone can, at least. And after what she’s just put him through he’s certain he knows her now. That knowledge has the hot feeling of humiliation to it, the tips of his ears going red as she hands his job to someone else. And he has to smile through the whole thing. He’s good at smiling. She’s better. She has a smile for everything. She can smile right at you and it can mean she hates you. She can smile and it can mean she barely sees you. She has one that means she is onto your bullshit and will watch serenely while you fall to your doom.

The luncheon doesn’t seem to have an end. The food is bland, but maybe he’s just lost his taste for this kind of thing. Andy puts a hand on his shoulder and he shrugs it off.

“Don’t make a fuss, for Godssake. She’s watching.”

Some people are not good people. Period. Some people you just have to give up hope on. They are a task for your work selves. A grim necessity. And you better keep a hard shell around whatever soft parts you have left. Because people like this are always looking for the best place to dig the knife in. You can bet on it.

* * *

**Emily**

Whether she is a good person or not is irrelevant. It’s a stupid question. Like asking if faux fur is in, (it’s not), or asking if you can bring your lunch to a run-through, (what is _wrong_ with you?). You might as well ask why it rains in the Spring, or why the best cheeses are full of fat. Some things just _are_. Miranda just is. You don’t need to wonder why. You simply need to appreciate what she accomplishes in the process, and for heaven’s sake, do try to keep up.

What do you all want? Hugs and kisses? If you want a cuddle you should put some effort in and find an appropriate person. She’s your boss. She’s not there to braid your hair.

Losing out on Paris, losing out on her dream, that hurts. Of course it bloody does. But you can’t stand in the sea and then cry about being wet. This isn’t some girl scout camp. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. And Emily is a big girl. She knows what she signed up for. She has a front row seat to one of the greatest voices in fashion history.

Is Miranda a good person. Who even cares?

* * *

**Caroline**

Her Mom isn’t a good person.

Sometimes. 

Maybe.

This is a new discovery, because her Mom’s a good enough person if she’s at home. She gives Lavinia days off to see her family and asks how her son is doing and she always gets her a nice bottle of perfume at Christmas. 

Mom forgets to have dinner with them a lot—she’s gone night after night because of whatever stuff is going wrong with the magazine. But she remembers that Caroline is a Ravenclaw and that Cassidy says she’s a Gryffindor (but everyone knows she’s a Slytherin). Mom mostly never misses a school concert, unless there’s a hurricane or something. She knows to remind Dad about important things, like how Caroline’s not eating meat or if she’s worried because her best friend is being a dick. And yeah, so Mom isn’t always there to tuck them in. Big deal. Caroline isn’t scared of the dark.

Mom makes people cry though. Caroline has seen her do it. Usually it’s the white-faced assistants who clip-clop through the house at all hours. But that’s not much of an accomplishment since assistants cry super easily, like those babydolls that squeak if you press their tummy in the right spot. Caroline and Cassidy used to make a game of finding where that spot was. Emily was an easy one to begin with. She would believe anything they said. But then they got caught out of bed sending her into the kitchen for a snack. They were instantly grounded and Emily got meaner. But mostly she pretended they didn’t exist.

When Andy started coming to the house she was easy to trick at first, like they all are. But she never cried and she was never mean. The game got boring after that.

Stephen thought her Mom was a bad person. He used to yell it. He yelled a bunch of other stuff that Caroline is sure she wasn’t meant to hear, ever. The fights were mostly just him, yelling, and then going to sleep in one of the spare rooms. Mom never yelled back, not even to say that Stephen was a bad person. And Caroline _knows_ he is. It’s been a month since he moved out of their house and he hasn’t even tried to see her or Cassidy. Like not even once. He waited until no one was home and then took his stuff; all his stuff. Mom called their Dad’s house from Paris and tried to explain it. Her voice was funny on the phone, clipped, like she gets when she’s trying not to cry.

When Mom is home from Paris, Emily is back delivering the book, hobbling on her crutches. Andy is just gone. Caroline and her sister manage to corner Emily near the front door.

“You have to tell us where Andy is, or I’ll start crying right now,” Caroline says. 

“Yeah, and Mom will think you hit her,” Cassidy adds. “She’ll believe it if I tell her.”

“I have a sodding limp!” Emily mutters. “But sure, fine. You really are the most dreadful little monsters, you know that?”

“Does that mean you’re gonna tell us?”

“Stay back. No go further, onto the stairs,” Emily orders, waving her crutch. “And no sudden moves.”

But she explains anyway. About how Andy had left their mother in Paris. Just left. Like Stephen. Except he’d at least sent a message and let Mom know.

Andy is a bad person. Caroline is suddenly really sure of this. Surer than she is about her Mom, who is maybe mostly good. But sometimes bad if she has to be. Or maybe she’s just all bad and Caroline doesn’t know the difference anymore. She asks Emily about it. Emily says don’t be stupid. 

“And for pity’s sake, stop talking to me when I’m here. Some of us actually want to keep the jobs we were hired to do.”

Sometimes Caroline worries that she’s not a good person either. She stops laughing at the assistants and just watches them from a distance. The same way she watches her mother.

* * *

**Miranda**

Whether she is a good person or not is inconsequential and, frankly, a ludicrous thing to ask a businesswoman of her caliber. She will not apologize for the decisions she has to make in the context of her work. She gets things accomplished that would make a lesser person fall to their knees and weep. She doesn’t always have time to hold people’s hands and ask them if they could pretty please be competent today. Could they pretty please not be absolutely useless, for once? Is she asking for the moon? Their first born? A contract in blood?

She takes the car home, but it’s much later than she is happy with. Caroline meets her at the door wearing pajamas and a frown. Cassidy is already asleep. But Caroline has a lot to say. Miranda has not just forgotten a dinner this time, she’s forgotten a special thing. An early birthday present that required her to be there, involving horses and a picnic in the grounds of a beautiful orchard. The timing had been off. There had been a crisis over the cover spread and millions of dollars some underling had blown without even managing a decent set of pictures. But this crisis is very real to her daughter. It scares Miranda. More than Irv’s muttered threats, more than the last vestiges of youth she sees slipping away in her mirror day by day. She is failing. 

“I hate you,” Caroline says. Her voice is low and quiet like she is imparting a deeply held truth. Miranda sends her to bed, unsure of what to say to that. 

In the silence that follows, she hears the door. Emily delivers The Book and Miranda retires to her study to look it over. But she’s having problems concentrating. She escapes to her liquor cabinet in hopes that it will quiet some of the darker thoughts she is having about herself. One voice in particular is louder than the others. 

Andréa

When she thinks of her former second assistant she no longer dwells on the childish tantrum that had the girl quitting before giving notice. She thinks instead of the judgement. The way the girl looked at her before she walked away for good. It settles in her stomach like a stone.

* * *

**Andy**

Ok, here’s a thought. Nobody would ask if a male editor was a good person based on how many times a day he smiled, or whether or not he fired an entire department for ruining a million-dollar shoot. Nobody would ask how he managed to _have it all_. They wouldn’t worry about his kids. They wouldn’t expect him to be the one to help them paste together wonky papier-mâché solar systems. That’s what mothers are for, right?

Andy knows how people expect things to look. Her own mother had been the one doing all the work at home. She’s less sure she’d live up to those expectations herself these days. 

Is Miranda a good person? Good for what? Good for whom? 

Paris ended with Andy’s cellphone landing abruptly in a fountain. She came home to an apartment with half the furniture missing and a letter from Nate that set her teeth to grind. There were messages she dreaded answering, from Doug, from Lily. Her apartment smelt like old cheese and rancid oil. She spent a week scrubbing every corner and grill and even then she wasn’t sure she found the source.

Days pass, then weeks. Andy starts a new job at the Mirror. She wanders around the city wearing normal shoes for once, and she can eat like a regular human at lunchtime without people looking at her weird. She’s working hard, long hours but she isn’t constantly spraining her ankles in shoes that don’t fit. Still, it all feels like a bit of an anti-climax. 

It’s not that she misses Miranda. But now that she’s less angry she’s less sure she did the right thing at all. She remembers the way Miranda looked in that bathrobe. How soft she was without her usual armor, her face free of make-up. She remembers how it felt to want to hold her. And that feeling lingers. Longer than outrage. Longer than anger. 

Is Miranda a good person? It’s not as simple as that. Is Andy a good person? Lily doesn’t think so. Nate is unavailable for comment. Doug says to stop being so melodramatic.

She isn’t sure what it says about her that she finds herself needing to reach out to Miranda. Just to hear her voice. Just to see. She feels like she’s falling short—all her reasons for walking away, the look on Nigel’s face at that luncheon and here she is dialing a number she will never truly forget.

Maybe nobody is truly good. 

Maybe Andy is losing her damn mind. 

Miranda answers the call, sounding tired, sounding wary. Andy tries not to let the surprise show in her voice. She is not going to waste this chance. She takes a breath.

“Miranda,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about you.”


End file.
